[Durelin]

Maegisil's eyes shot open, a shout still ringing in his hears. His troubled sleep was interrupted by the sudden clamor outside, which easily reached inside his bedroom. He sat up, and he turned to see his wife looking up at him from where she lay beside him. Her eyes were wide with fear, and he expected they mirrored his own. The shouts grew louder, and the sound of a horn filled the air to almost overcome all other noise. Both Maegisil and Sairien knew what that call meant, though they had not heard it before this night: the army had arrived, the attack had begun. Maegisil threw the covers off and jumped out of his bed, and kneeling on the ground beside his bed, he pulled out a large trunk from underneath it. It seemed to have not been touched for many years, and it had not been since Maegisil had last seen battle, since the days when he was a glorious swordsman and defender of his lord.

He fumbled trying to get it open, and he realized his hands were shaking violently. He was unsure why, though at the moment he was unsure of just about everything. He was almost afraid he had forgotten how to use a sword, but he doubted that that was something you could ever forget, how to kill. Sairien watched him, having risen from the bed as well. Her hands were folded at her waist, and she held herself in a way that made her look as elegant as any queen, even in her nightgown. After he opened the chest to stare down at the cold mithril, steel, and leather, Maegisil looked up at his wife. He froze, feeling choked. Her beauty was radiant to him, and he felt he could not dry his eyes from her. And when he met her eyes... He felt his chest tighten and his throat close, and he felt the tears begin to collect in the bottom of his eyelids. Suddenly he felt a stinging pain in his hand. He blinked and pulled his eyes away from Sairien to find his hand clenched around the curved mithril blade of his sword. The next moment, his wife laid her hand on his shoulder and pulled his own hand of his blade with the other. The blood had already begun to pool on his hand, and she tore a small strip from her nightgown and tied it tightly around his palm.

“You are blessed that it was your left hand,” she said. He could not look her in the eyes, so he stared at her handiwork.

“Thank you,” he whispered after a moment, and then rose, pulling his sword out of his trunk. He started to wipe the little bit of blood off the blade with the edge of his sleep shirt, but Sairien grabbed him by the wrist and took the sword from him. He turned to look at her, but her expression was blank.

“Put on your armour,” she said softly. Maegisil relished in hearing her voice.

He frowned at her for another moment, but then began to comply. The segmented plates of finely shaped mithril over tough but soft dark leather were fine protection from slashing blows and many thrusts, and had served him well for many a battle in years past. And they had never limited his movement, insuring that his agility and dexterity could be used to his advantage. Celebrimbor had often joked about the quickness of his feet when it came to swordplay, but he knew that it was no joke on the battlefield. After he started to don the armour, Sairien put his sword carefully down on the only table in their bedroom. Maegisil noticed that she was careful not to smear the blood on it, but, even when Sairien came over to help him, he did not say anything. He would wait for her to speak, and he knew she would soon. Her hands were shaking too.

After he looked the warrior he had been centuries ago, in what seemed to him a past life, Sairien stepped back to look at him, and he watched her as she began to break down. She fell to her knees, and the tears came. He knelt down with her, and carefully and tenderly wrapped his arms around her. And though she shook, she did not sob, and her voice was steady when she spoke. Once again, Maegisil admired her strength, and wished he had it. “There is already blood on your steel, Maegisil,” she said, “Your blood. Let that be the only blood you shed today. Let Ilúvatar see that you have already shed blood, and tears, and need shed no more!”

Maegisil took her hand in his, and whispered to her as he felt a tear begin its way down his cheek. “We must go quickly to the palace, my love. You must be safe...and you could have been. It is my fault that we are still here, we should have flown when we had the chance...”

He started to continue, but Sairien interrupted him. “We could not have flown, we are not akin to the birds. This is our city. We cannot simply fly from it and build ourselves another nest.” She paused to kiss him softly. “I will stay here. I will be safe. Just come back.”

There was something in her eyes that calmed him, even though they glistened with her tears. She would be safe here, somehow he knew. And there was something in him that told him that the palace would never be safe, that Celebrimbor would abandon his people once again. Anger flashed in his eyes.

“I will come back for you.”

He rose after one last kiss, and looked back only once, when he took his sword from off the table, before he closed the bedroom door behind him and rushed down the stairs and out of his house. He took off at a run, anger driving him on even while it told him that he did not belong where he was going. He certainly had no feeling of duty to his lord, nor even to his city. It was always Celebrimbor's dream, the grandeur of Ost-in-edhil, of his great 'kingdom' of Eregion. Maegisil wondered what had held the elf-lord back from proclaiming himself a king.

The palace was on a raised plateau of land, and it was grueling for even most elves to run up that slow but steady incline leading toward the center of the city. But Maegisil's body was remembering the old days, and his strength was fed by anger. Soon he reached the palace, and found a large numbered of guards garrisoned there, as well as soldier preparing to head to the walls. He stopped only to receive permission from the guards to proceed through, and then continued his run. He was lost in the bustle of things, just another soldier, and he liked it that way. He never liked the idea of being ‘Counselor Maegisil.’

His soft leather boots skidded to a halt on the cold stone floor in front of a large gilded door. Maegisil knew this door too well, and he knew the way to it better even than he knew his sword. This only angered him more, as he thought of all the years he had wasted, a ‘counselor’ to the Lord Celebrimbor, a mocking title for a mockery of a position. He was about to push the door open when a guard's arm snapped out to stop him. He had not noticed the guards positioned on each side of the door. Celebrimbor had never bothered to make anyone stand guard outside his door. Finally, when twenty thousand of Sauron's forces were banging on his city's gate, he put two guards outside his chambers. Maegisil wanted to laugh.

“I am sorry, Maegisil,” the guard said, and the elf he was addressing recognized him to be Gilduin, an elf of Lorien, who he had met several months ago when the Lorien forces first arrived in Ost-in-edhil. Maegisil always remembered faces, and almost always the names that went with them. “Gilduin...you...why are you here? Has no one escaped serving this...lord?” He gestured toward the door, disdain clear in his face and his voice. But he did not wait for a response. He ran again, to his right down to the end of the hallway and turned a sharp left. There were no walls of the thick but elegant stone of the rest of the palace here, but rather there were graceful, beautifully etched pillars that served the same purpose as an enclosed wall, but gave a gorgeous view of the eastern horizon. Maegisil had watched a sunrise with his wife here. A tiny, pale light began to creep up from behind the Mountains of Mist, the tips of its long, spindly arms trying to grab hold of the darkness to tear it away. But they did not have a hold of it yet. The sun would not rise for another few hours, and so the lights of torches were the brightest in the night. There were thousands of them upon the field before the walls of the city. He had hoped that he remembered this spot right, that it was high enough to see well above and beyond the city walls. He had also dreaded being right. His breath was caught in his throat as he scanned the mass of moving objects that he knew to all be enemies, to all be of the Enemy. So the Deceiver had become, his master defeated so long ago. The hope that Sauron would follow in his master's footsteps was not in Maegisil's heart.

Watching the moving figures along the walls and in the city below, his hand moved to the hilt of his sword that hung at his side. It will be as long a siege as we can make it...